The irreverent musings of a sardonic wisenheimer who’s prone to fits of hopefulness and hypersensitivity.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Strong Woman Pounds Silly Little Men

So some nitwits and numbskulls who were somehow elected to Congress took on the most admired woman in the world last Wednesday and by most accounts, they went down for the count.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee each held a hearing to examine issues surrounding the murders of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others last September 11 in Benghazi, Libya. For two and a half hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, the outgoing Secretary of State – who was hospitalized just a few weeks ago after doctors discovered a blood clot in her head – more than held her own against pandering politicians who were hell-bent not on getting to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi but on trying to tarnish the credibility and reputation of Clinton and her boss, President Obama. (Right-wingers insist the administration ignored intelligence that the attack was imminent, didn't provide adequate security for the U.S. Consulate and is now trying to cover everything up.)

First of all, it’s not incredibly astute for lawmakers to go after Hillary Clinton. The American people have named her the Most Admired Woman for each of the last 11 years, according to Gallup polls. (In fact, she’s been named Most Admired more than any other woman in Gallup history.) Congress, on the other hand, ranks somewhere below cockroaches, traffic jams and Nickelback in Americans' esteem, according to Public Policy Polling.

J. Christopher Stevens

Secondly, anyone who watched the hearings could see that committee members were interested more in appearing big and strong for eventual campaign commercials than in finding out how and why over 100 gunmen attacked the U.S. Consulate just five months ago. (Ambassador Stevens died from asphyxiation caused by smoke inhalation; U.S. Information Officer Sean Smith and embassy security officers Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods also lost their lives.)

The administration initially said the assaults were retaliation for the release of an anti-Islamic video, “Innocence of Muslims.” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice appeared on interview shows on September 16 armed with talking points provided by the CIA suggesting that the brouhaha in Benghazi was “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi.” Two days later, the POTUS himself told David Letterman that "extremists and terrorists used [the anti-Muslim YouTube video] as an excuse to attack a variety of our embassies."

It emerged later that it was in fact not an impromptu act by an inflamed mob but a clearly-planned, military-type attack resulting from American foreign policy.

So politicians decided this ambiguity warranted televised congressional hearings, and smarmy panderers like John McCain (R-AZ), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) went to town. McCain told Clinton, “The answers you’ve given this morning, frankly, are unsatisfactory to me.” Johnson, a Tea Party-backed first-termer, insisted that Ambassador Rice had “intentionally misled” people – a claim with which Madame Secretary did not agree.

Apparently he forgot about that little skirmish in Iraq launched by Dubya back in 2003 which lasted more than eight years, resulted in the deaths of almost 4,500 Americans and over 1.4 million Iraqis, and didn’t turn up a single weapon of mass destruction.

You know why these hearings are nothing more than a partisan dog and pony show? Because the same folks who are indignantly interrogating Hillary Clinton have stymied the Obama administration’s attempts to boost security and increase funding for the 260 embassies, consulates and missions that we maintain in 180 countries around the globe.

Last September 18, the Center for American Progress pointed out, “In each of the last two years, Congress has cut President Obama’s request for U.S. Foreign Service and U.S. Agency for International Development staffing levels despite repeated analysis by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, indicating that our embassies are critically understaffed.”

But wait. There’s more:

“In the 2011 continuing resolution, Congress, at the insistence of the House of Representatives, slashed the president’s request for embassy security and construction and forced another cut in fiscal year 2012. Altogether Congress has eliminated $296 million from embassy security and construction in the last two years with additional cuts in other State Department security accounts.”

Here's even more from the Washington Post:

“For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department’s Worldwide Security Protection program — well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration’s request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration’s request.) Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans’ proposed cuts to her department would be ‘detrimental to America’s national security’ — a charge Republicans rejected.”

Don’t like the Center for American Progress or the Washington Post? How about the New York Times? The Old Gray Lady published an op-ed on October 14, 2012 that included the following:

“The ugly truth is that the same people who are accusing the administration of not providing sufficient security for the American consulate in Benghazi have voted to cut the State Department budget, which includes financing for diplomatic security. The most self-righteous critics don’t seem to get the hypocrisy, or maybe they do and figure that if they hurl enough doubts and complaints at the administration, they will deflect attention from their own poor judgments on the State Department’s needs.”

As I posted in Facebook the other day, I resent these guys using the deaths of four human beings to try to score political points and slow Hillary Clinton's rush to the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. After watching these sleazy bozos, I can't wait to knock on doors and lick envelopes for her.

Click here for a story entitled, “Hillary Clinton exits Benghazi probe looking stronger than ever,” and click here to read New York magazine’s “Seven Things Hillary Clinton Was Saying When She Adjusted Her Glasses.”

Regarding the Photos...

Patrick tries to obtain permission to post photos and credit the photographers but sometimes those people are unknown or unreachable. If you're a photographer who stumbles upon your work here at "What's the Diehl?," please contact him and he'll credit you or remove your image.

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About Me

Patrick Diehl, 55, has been writing professionally for more than 30 years. When he's not writing or lamenting the direction in which the planet's heading, he enjoys replacing the filling in the middle of his kids’ Oreo cookies with ranch dressing, slipping books entitled “Wok Cooking 101” and “Ukelele For Beginners” in his son’s school backpack and recording nonsensical voicemail messages for his wife and marking them “urgent.”